Michael Feingold, chief theater critic for The Village Voice, has received the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism for the 1995-96 season, Cornell University has announced. The award recognizes the American "who has written the best piece of drama criticism during the theatrical year (July 1--June 30), whether it is an article, an essay, treatise or book."

The trust establishing the award was left to Cornell's Department of English by George Jean Nathan (1882-1958), the late author and critic who graduated from the university in 1904. Winners of the award, which has been granted annually since 1958 and is one of the most distinguished in American theater, receive $10,000. The winner is selected by a committee consisting of the chairs of the English departments of Cornell, Princeton and Yale universities and an expert on dramatic criticism from each department. The committee is led by Jonathan Culler, chair of Cornell's Department of English.

The committee considers, based on its own survey and submitted nominations, works by authors, critics or reviewers who are U.S. citizens and whose works are published in newspapers, magazines and other periodicals, as individual publications, or broadcast on television or radio programs originating in the United States.

In its citation, the selection committee recognizes Feingold for "not only his passionate and intelligent coverage of the 1995-96 season in New York City, but also the excellence he has sustained throughout his career as a theater critic.

"We particularly commend him," the citation continues, "as a champion of the American drama, in all of its musical and non-musical variations. His ability to articulate our theatrical past, respond to our theatrical present and dream our theatrical future makes him one of the most valuable players on the contemporary American theatrical scene."

Cornell's Culler said, "We were particularly impressed by the vigor and intensity of Mr. Feingold's writing, his ability to bring performance history to bear in fascinating ways on the evaluation of contemporary productions and the breadth of his taste.

"Whether he is writing on Shakespeare or the latest musical, he comes up with insights, comparisons and turns of phrase that excite you about theatergoing," Culler added.

Feingold joined The Village Voice, New York City's weekly newspaper, in 1971 and has been its chief theater critic since 1974.

He also has worked directly in the theater for more than 25 years. A graduate of Columbia University and the Yale School of Drama, he spent much of the 1970s as literary manager for the newly formed Yale Repertory Theatre. He has since directed many other theater groups throughout the country, and in New York he has directed for such renowned venues as the American Place Theatre and Circle Rep.

Feingold has taught at the O'Neill Theater Center's National Critics Institute and at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Currently he is working on a new translation of Schiller's Mary Stuart, commissioned by the American Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco.

His honors have included the American Book Awards' Walter Lowenfels Prize in Criticism and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Past recipients of his latest honor, the Nathan Award, have included Walter Kerr (1963) and Mel Gussow (1978) of The New York Times, Kevin Kelly (1992) of The Boston Globe and John Lahr (1969, 1994) of The New Yorker.